by Tim Lebbon
“Brady …” Dan shook his head, knowing his friend was right. “Coincidence. Just pretend.”
They stood silently for another few seconds and then Dan rang the bell again. “She can’t have gone out. She was feeling rough.”
“Maybe she went for a walk. Er … so why am I here, Dan?”
“Want to chat to you about something.”
“Oh.” Brady shifted from foot to foot behind him, and Dan imagined him staring down at his feet, silent but thoughtful. Brady was the strong quiet type. With a nickname like that, who could blame him? “Hey, if it’s about that night at Bar None, just, er, forget it. Everyone does something-“
Dan turned to his friend. “It is about that, but not the way you may think. Megan still doesn’t know about it, so don’t tell her, but I’m glad I hit that fuck. He’s been … threatening me. And my family, though I’m not sure. … I don’t know whether he’s spoken to Megan or Nikki yet.
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That’s why I came home. Megan sounded weird.”
“She’s been ill,” Brady muttered as Dan turned back to the door, bent down and shouted through the letter-flap.
The door flew open and Dan leaped back in surprise.
I’ll honor Megan with a good hard fuck, Brand had said. For a split second Dan closed his eyes because he did not want to see, but what he imagined was surely worse than the truth could be.
“Honey,” Megan said, surprised. “You’re home early. Hello Brady.”
“Thought you sounded a bit lonely so I came home, see how you are.” Dan could hear the lie in his voice and wondered if Megan could too.
She stood on the threshold, one hand on the door, the other holding a toilet brush. Both hands were gloved. She wore an apron. There was a spot of something on her forehead, a scab of blood from a dried spot, perhaps.
“Doing some cleaning?”
“I really feel a lot better,” she said, turning away so that he could not see her face and going back upstairs. “Make me a cuppa, hon, I’ll be down in a minute.”
Dan and Brady closed the front door behind them and stood in the hallway. Dan could smell the fumes drifting down from upstairs, bleach and bath cleaner and the subtle and disturbing hint of Megan’s sweat underneath. She must have been working hard. He glanced at Brady to see if his friend thought this as strange as he did,
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but Brady’s face wore its usual mask of composure and calm.
“Tea?” Dan asked
“That would be nice. And biscuits, please. Drag me out here and keep me in the dark like all the skeletons in your dusty closet, dangling and loose-limbed and ever so handy with pool cues, no doubt … the very least you can do is to feed me biscuits.”
In the kitchen Brady sat at the breakfast bar, picked a paper from the small pile ready for recycling, and started reading it as Dan made the tea. “Weird about those footprints,” he commented, scanning the local rag from a few days before.
Dan leaned against the sink and closed his eyes, slowly rubbing his face as if dry-washing. He sighed. “That’s when it started, really.” He looked at his friend, sitting at the bar and obviously feeling slightly uncomfortable with the scrap of strangeness Dan had aimed his way, and for an insane few seconds Dan envied him: lived on his own; only himself to think about; no real worries. “It’s all been very odd.”
And then he told Brady about Brand, the lift in the snow, the weird feeling he’d had when they arrived home that night, the sense that Brand was still around even though they’d ejected him from their car (Megan kicked him out, she did it, I didn’t help) … and everything else. He told him everything.
By the time Megan came back downstairs with a black sack full of rubbish, they’d reached the point where Dan knew he had to decide: call the
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police or not? Brady had suggested it, Dan had fielded the idea and tossed it around, and now Brady simply sat there staring at his friend, his doleful eyes insisting that it was the only option.
Dan knew he looked like a schoolboy caught stealing apples. “Tea’s here,” he said to his wife.
She smiled too widely and sounded too cheerful. “I’ll just dump this in the dustbin.” The back door drifted shut behind her. Dan wondered just what game of lies they were both playing.
“You have to call them,” Brady hissed, Megan’s reappearance perhaps urging him to insist upon it. “This guy sounds like a lunatic.”
“You saw him.”
Brady shrugged. “Well, I saw some poor sod get whacked by a pool cue. And I didn’t hear … well, I didn’t hear what you said you heard in the bar.”
Dan shrugged and stared at the back door. “She’s acting weird.”
Brady sniffled, his version of a laugh. “No offense, mate, really. But your Megan’s always been a little … off-kilter.”
Dan smiled without looking at Brady. He knew how right his friend was.
Megan came back in and drank her tea. Five minutes later Dan saw Brady off. They had still not agreed on the solution to Dan’s problem. Brady gave him a meaningful look as the door closed on him. Police. You have to. No question.
“Not often we see Brady during the day,” Megan said as Dan closed the front door.
“He was passing. Dropped in for a cup of tea.”
“Oh.”
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She didn’t ask why, or whether he knew Dan would be home, or how strange it was for Brady of all people-strange, shy, quiet Brady-to make an unexpected social call.
She didn’t ask anything.
Dan watched his wife wander into the kitchen, rubbing her hands together as if to rid them of a stain and muttering about the damn spiders and flies.
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Chapter Ten
Mandy’s eighteenth birthday party promised to be a wild affair.
Nikki hadn’t seen or heard from Jazz since she’d left him on the library floor the previous afternoon. He usually waited for her after school but not this time, and when she’d casually strolled by the place where he usually parked his bike and saw it empty, the relief was tempered by a vague disappointment. However much of a young fool he was, he was a young fool in love, and Nikki was flattered. She liked him. She didn’t want to hurt him. His obvious show of petulance was to grab her attention and to strike back, and in a way it had worked; she had wanted to see him. But at the back of her mind as she waited for the bus home was Brand.
The library window had stared at the back of
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her head as she boarded the noisy bus. She had been so tempted to look around, yet somehow she had refrained. Not that there would have been anybody there. Of course not. Nobody here but us flies, alive and mostly dead.
He hadn’t phoned that night either, and when he failed to show the next day in school Nikki became concerned. They’d had a row, true, but they’d rowed before. It was not like him to ignore her like this … mainly because he could not. He was smitten, and she was certain that any brief show of aloofness would have been ended by her failing to fall for it and contact him. She listened for his bike, watched from the window before lessons started, failed to see him arrive, asked Mandy and Jesse whether they’d seen him. Neither had. They gave no indication that they knew about the scene in the library. If they were covering up for Jazz they were doing an Oscarworthy job of it. Besides, Nikki was sure that Jesse wouldn’t do anything against her. Bless him, he was smitten as well.
Smitten … she liked how Jazz thought of her, but it was certainly not something she had ever felt over someone else. Jazz was nice, he was cute when he wasn’t acting the jerk, he had a good body, he was intelligent and witty (again, when he wasn’t a jerk). But she certainly was not smitten with him. He told her he loved her and she said it back, because it felt nice and comfortable and she didn’t want to hurt him. But if she was in love with him it certainly wasn’t the electric feeling everyone made it out to be, and that in itself proved that she was not.
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Th
en she had met Brand.
Now, everything was different. As she set off for Mandy’s party she realized that her concern for Jazz existed simply to keep up appearances, for herself as much as anyone else. That lunchtime in school, the headmaster had sent a message to every class asking if anyone had seen Jazz. His parents had been in touch to say that he was missing, they were worried but not too frantic as yet; he had gone missing for a night before, apparently, although this was news to Nikki. Anyone who knew where he was, they asked, please let them know. If he was upset about something they could talk it through. If he was in trouble, they could discuss it. Anything could be overcome. They just wanted him home.
Nikki had looked down at her hands and seen that they were shaking. She’d closed her eyes and tried to picture Jazz as she had last seen him, but the only face she could see was Brand’s, a shadow staring from the library window, hidden in the woods, breathing at her behind The Hall, and the longer she kept her eyes closed the more the image of Brand invaded, the dream of him invading her and grasping onto her hips as they made love.
She’d opened her eyes and gasped, drawing curious glances from those around her.
Jazz … what an idiot. If he thought pulling a stunt like this would make her feel bad, he could think again … and again.
In fact he could think again anyway, Nikki thought as they pulled up in front of Mandy’s house. If he wasn’t here tonight, he could just
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think on forever without her, because she wasn’t hanging around. Not for him, not for … Well, maybe there was someone she would wait for.
Feeling no guilt, Nikki shamelessly hoped that Jazz did not show tonight.
She had an idea that someone else would.
Mandy’s parents were both solicitors, and their house was a garish display of the wealth their careers had accumulated. Like Mandy they wanted people to know that they were there, and their three-storey home, surrounded by half an acre of garden lovingly maintained by hired help, was painted a bright yellow, just too bright to be called “sandstone.” The windows were large, offering an open view into the family’s private life. The front door was sheltered by a huge open porch, more suited to the finest London hotels than a country house a mile from Tall Stennington. Every time Nikki paid a visit she expected a doorman to step out and help her from the car, then take her dad’s keys and offer to park for him. The roof was steeply pitched, which drove its pinnacle above the surrounding trees so that it protruded like a castle in an old fairytale. And like any good castle a wind vane spun on top, the wrought iron fashioned into what Mandy insisted was her family emblem: a bear holding a snake aloft. Cool, Nikki thought, though she’d never said this to Mandy. The whole house stood out like a beacon, especially at night when several banks of floodlights lit its facades. Security, Mandy would say if anyone at school quizzed her about it. Display, most people with more than an
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ounce of sense would know. It was a beautiful house and it deserved to be seen, but the fact of who the owners were made that flaunting crass in the extreme.
Nikki’s parents had even postulated that Mandy was sent to a comprehensive school because it gave her more to boast about. At a private school she’d be just another grape in the bunch.
“Don’t get lost in the dungeons,” her dad said as Nikki opened the car door. She always heard a note of envy in his voice when he made a quip about the place.
“I expect her mum and dad have locked them up and kept the key,” she said.
“Hey, maybe Jeremy is in there!”
“Jazz is just sulking, Dad.”
“Well I hope he shows soon for his parents’ sake.”
Nikki leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thanks for the lift. He will show, he’s just being a big kid.”
Her dad smiled past the sadness that she was becoming used to, the mourning for the loss of his little girl. He glanced her up and down-took in her tight top and short skirt-and she knew what was coming, but she didn’t object or leave because she knew it was something he had to say.
“Be careful, Nikki.”
“I will Dad.”
He looked at her so meaningfully that she almost laughed. “You know what I mean.”
“Dad!” She kissed him again, leapt from the Freelander before he could start talking about
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condoms or disease or how boys her age were walking glands, and slammed the door behind her. She waved as he pulled off, wanting to watch the car back onto the main road, but she was suddenly aware that anyone looking from the house would see her.
It was barely nine o’clock and the party sounded to be in full swing already. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were blasting through closed windows. Lights flashed in the dining room, throwing distorted shadows out across the lawn as revellers danced or stood close to the window. The living room windows had no curtains, and Nikki could see a dozen people milling around, sitting in cliquey corners or strolling in and out. Mandy was one of them. Bottle of wine in one hand, cigarette in the other, she was touring her party and playing the hostess, probably asking everyone if they were all right for drinks and suggesting they visit the wine cellar later because she knew where her mum and dad kept the key and she was sure they wouldn’t mind, after all it was her eighteenth birthday …
There were rabbits on the lawn, sitting in the pools of light. They glanced up and down at the house. Ears twitched. Whiskers moved as they sniffed the air. Nikki wondered why they weren’t afraid.
She glanced up at the house looming above her and saw lights on the top two floors as well. She wondered whether Jazz was in there somewhere, waiting to surprise her with his coolness. Just like him to turn up and say “Hi-‘ as if nothing had happened, kiss her and hold her and display her
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to his friends like a badge that said “Hey, we had a row but she loves me so much she’s wanting me back already.” He’d want to kiss and make up, and no doubt he’d already scouted the house and found the quietest corner where he’d try to drag her before midnight. Seduce her with his rampaging ideas of subtlety. Cynical of her, she knew. Nasty. And yet again she hoped he was not here. Thinking the house empty of him made it easier to ring the doorbell.
She rang three or four times before she heard Mandy shout for whoever it was to just come the fuck in. As she reached for the handle something scuttled through the bushes beside the front door and made her jump. A bird, a mouse, a rabbit? Maybe a cat, hiding in there and watching the humans at play. She glanced back over her shoulder at the dark gardens, made darker by the light splashing out from inside.
Was Brand there? Was he watching her from darkness? She was standing under the porch light, he’d see her from anywhere between here and the road. He could be standing there in the open like a tree, smiling at her, touching himself as her eyes passed over him without seeing, promising her something with eyes she could not see and would never be able to understand if she could.
“Brand,” she said, and it felt like the first time she’d ever said his name aloud.
The door burst open and Mandy screamed at her. “Nikki!”
“Shit!” Nikki stumbled back two steps and then laughed at her friend. She looked pissed
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already. She’d be in bed before midnight and Nikki wondered with whom.
“Nikki, come in, drink, eat, music and gorgeous blokes in the dining room, booze and food and gorgeous blokes in the kitchen, dope and gorgeous blokes and Jesse in the living room.”
“No Jazz?” she asked as she walked by Mandy.
“Thought he’d be with you.” Her breath smelled like an accident in a brewery.
“Nope.” She handed Mandy a present-a copy of David Beckham’s biography-and cringed as her friend hugged and kissed her.
“He’s a jerk,” Mandy said. “Forget him … plenty more sharks in the sea!”
Someone came from the living room and bumped into Nikki, mumbling an apology and heading down
the hallway to the kitchen.
“And there’s one!” Mandy said. “Charles, my mum’s boss’s son. Take a look at him, Nikki, and tell me what you see.”
Nikki watched the tall boy walk carefully into the kitchen, fingertips brushing one wall to guide himself along the way. Too early to be drunk … he’d been on the dope already. She shrugged. “Pissed bloke?”
“Rich cock on legs,” Mandy whispered in her ear. “Twenty grand in the bank and seven inches, so I’m led to believe.” Then she took a huge slug of wine and stormed into the dining room, immersing herself in music and light and the adoration of her invited friends. “Have fun!” she commanded Nikki over her shoulder.
Nikki went into the living room and glanced around. Like every room in the house it was
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huge, the three-piece suite swallowed at one end with another couple of easy chairs and a slew of floor cushions by the shelved near wall. The shelves were loaded with books that Mandy had never read and her parents never had time to read, and knowing that only made the room seem colder. There were about twenty people in here, most of whom she was distressed to note she didn’t know. Mandy’s social life was governed largely by her parents, perhaps as a way of having an involvement in their daughter’s life where work otherwise prevented them. This room was filled with friends’ kids, clients’ kids, the offspring of people they knew from their country club. Nikki wondered just how many of them were really Mandy’s friends. They sat and chatted and laughed in a cloud of cigarette and pot smoke.
“Nikki!” Jesse called. He was sitting on a settee at the far end of the room, a can of lager warming between his thighs, girls on either side talking to anyone but him. Nikki’s heart sank for her friend, both at his predicament-he must know what he looked like-and the eagerness he showed at her appearance. He struggled to his feet and weaved his way between seated and sprawled bodies. “Hey, Nikki. Okay?”
